Still Waters by John Moss Page A

course. Nice Sanke, that one.”
    â€œWhich one?”
    â€œThe big one.”
    â€œWhich big one?”
    So, she thought, those two were Sanke. The other big guy, the length of her arm with black on its head, had to be a Showa.
    â€œI like the Showa best,” she said. “Old-style. Lots of black.”
    â€œSumi,” he said. “Black is sumi, red is hi.”
    â€œWhat got you going on koi, Morgan? It’s unusual even for you.”
    â€œA magazine cover in one of the big box stores. I was grazing through the magazine section, looking at gardening journals —”
    â€œYou don’t garden.”
    â€œI know, but it was spring.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œI saw the word
koi
in bright orange letters across the top of a magazine for the English country gardener, and I didn’t know what koi meant —”
    â€œYou would hate that.”
    â€œSo I’ve been reading. Good thing, too.”
    â€œFor sure — if this is a crime about fish.”
    â€œExactly.”
    â€œI was on the Net last night,” said Miranda. “Emailed an old friend of mine, a marine biologist in Halifax. I asked her about the water swirling in the wrong direction. She’s one hour ahead of us, so I got my answer this morning before I left home.”
    â€œWe figured it was the filter.”
    â€œYeah, but do you know why? It returns perpendicular to the wall to create a current, so the fish are always swimming. To keep them in shape. It can probably be reversed, so they swim both ways.”
    He chewed his bagel and sipped his coffee, resisting what to him seemed an obvious quip about swimming both ways. “Have I ever met her?”
    â€œNo, you don’t know everyone I know, you know.”
    â€œI know.”
    They walked over to the lower pond. It was skirted by rocks placed with casual artifice as if by the hand of a thoughtful god. Set off against shrubbery, grasses,moss, and well-placed Japanese maples, close under the towering silver maples, there was a lovely decadence about it, haunting, like a Southern mansion from Faulkner drifting toward ruin.
    â€œMust be a spring down there,” said Miranda. “And enough seepage through the embankment to keep it fresh.”
    â€œMust be,” said Morgan. She was right, of course. There had to be considerable flow if there were no filters or even an aerator.
    â€œIt’s lined with bentonite clay.” She settled down on her heels to scoop a handful of muck from below the waterline.
    Of course, he thought.
    â€œI’ll bet there are fish in there,” she said. “The diver missed them.”
    Of course: still water, the clay, freshness, the opacity.
    â€œHave you ever tried to catch hold of a fish when you’re underwater? You wouldn’t even see it in here. A perfect growing environment for prize koi.” She scraped the clay off her hand, rinsing in the opaque water.
    â€œThere’s apparently a grate of some sort along the fence side,” said Morgan. “The diver didn’t think it went anywhere, part of an old drainage system. She said there was no current. Maybe fish were hiding behind the grate.”
    They walked back toward the house, agreeing the best fish might be hidden in the lower pond.
    Like diamonds in a vault, a mink in cold storage, a stolen painting kept under the bed. Like a bottle of 1967 Chateau D’Yquem buried in the deepest recesses of a wine cellar, too valuable for an honest cop to consider drinking.
    â€œâ€˜Fallen rain on autumn leaves,’” said Miranda as they stopped by the formal pond. “That’s what Ochiba Shigura means. There’s nothing about ‘I am sad.’ I checked it out.”
    He repeated the phrase. Then he added, “Nice, what you can do with words when you don’t know their meaning. It’s the most beautiful, the Ochiba Shigura.”
    â€œA little austere for me. You’re very